Getting the Word out.

그냥. Geunyang.

I keep it at the back of my mind. Only pull it out when necessary, or when certain days call for it. I don’t dwell on it much these days, or maybe for the last four years since I relocated. I have often used the word ‘resigned’ to describe what I feel about the topic when it comes up. It could be positive or negative, depending on the current mood, I guess. Generally, it is positive. It doesn’t keep me hoping or distracted. It’s somewhere in the closet or in the garage, and when you need to pull it out, you just go there. It is just as the word suggests: you’re resigned. You have a sense of resignation or acceptance that you can’t change anything about it anyway, so you just go with it. There’s a Korean phrase for this. 그냥. Geunyang. Or Just because.

I’m talking about my love life, of course. Or the lack thereof. Jem asked me why I hadn’t subscribed to this online thing I mentioned to her before. I said I got bored. She says, ‘well, get started.’ I kind of looked at her text with aloofness, because, as mentioned above, I feel resigned. It’s just something I don’t think about anymore unless people talk about it and I’m forced to bring it out of the closet and into reality. What has happened in the four years since I relocated? I’ve become reclusive to a point, but still sociable when the situation calls for it.

I looked at Jem’s message again and then I felt sad. So sad that in a matter of seconds, I could feel tears well up in my eyes. So this is what I’m truly feeling if I pull it out. Maybe that’s why I don’t, because I would just feel upset about things. Why would I feel upset? A lot of reasons. I don’t pray about it because I often feel like a kid asking God for a present that I know he’s going to give anyway but I’m just being impatient over. Then it gets me thinking if He will really give it, and then I go to all these monologues about how I know He will but He has his timing and his reasons and I should just keep doing the things I’m doing now, which is again why I don’t bring it up in the first place. Another reason I don’t pray for it is because I don’t want to get disappointed if it doesn’t get answered. 그냥 Geunyang. We’re still very much after self-preservation and we want to mitigate risks and lessen disappointments in life.

The more important reason behind why I don’t pray for it is because I don’t think I’m ready. Some days, I do. I feel ready to settle down and head to a direction with someone I love as we both fulfill our God-given tasks and paths in life. Then some days, I feel like crap and there’s a thousand little and big things to change about me that maybe if I just address them, I would be ready. Then again, if everyone went with this reasoning, nobody would have gotten married, right? Imperfect people get into relationships with imperfect people. No one is ever ready, I suppose. Marriages aren’t perfect.

I did feel sad because I didn’t want to bring it up to God and cry over it. If He wanted, He would have given me this gift now, but obviously, He is withholding for a much bigger purpose which I cannot understand at this point. I try not to be bitter or to self-pity or to even be lonely, because it robs me of the joy of today but yes, it will get you sometimes. It will hit you when you don’t want it to hit you, this loneliness. You look for a gazillion reasons to be thankful to God and you find it and you’re fixed, you’re settled. Your heart goes back into a mode of contentment. But it doesn’t address the loneliness. Even Elisabeth Eliot, my favorite author, once wrote that you offer your loneliness to God. In the garden of Eden, the only thing that wasn’t good was man being alone. He needed a helpmate to journey this life with, and there’s a good reason for that.

Anyway, as usual, these feelings are fleeting and they last only for a moment. When I’ve written my thoughts and my heart out and prayed and cried over it, I usually get over quickly. I’m like that. I try not to dwell on things I don’t have control over. 그냥. Geunyang.